Amid a new report alleging that the US National Security Agency monitored the telephone conversations of as many as 35 world leaders, Germany and Brazil have joined forces to seek a UN resolution to restrain the extensive American spying.
Even as Britain’s Guardian newspaper, citing a classified document provided by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, reported NSA’s monitoring of the phone calls of 35 world leaders without naming any of them, German and Brazilian diplomats began their efforts at the United Nations.
The document supplied by Snowden, currently living in Russia after being granted a one-year asylum on August 1, reportedly notes that one US official handed over 200 numbers, including 35 world leaders, to the NSA for monitoring. The confidential memo on this is dated October 2006.
The Guardian report came close on the heels of German Chancellor Angela Merkel accusing the US on Wednesday of tapping her mobile phone. Merkel’s charge prompted President Barack Obama to assure her that “the United States is not monitoring and will not monitor” her communications.
The Obama assurance notwithstanding, the Washington-based Foreign Policy magazine reported on Friday that Germany and Brazil are actively working for the adoption of a UN General Resolution that promotes the right of privacy on the internet.
The report said that Brazilian and German diplomats met in New York on Thursday with a small group of latin American and European governments to consider a draft resolution that calls for expanding privacy rights contained in the International Covenant Civil and Political Rights to the online world.
Before Chancellor Merkel’s complaint, Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff had last month called off Obama’s invitation for a State visit to Washington in the wake of revelations that the NSA had spied on her personal communications. Brazil and Germany are reportedly hoping to put the resolution they are lobbying for to a vote in the UN General Assembly human rights committee.
Just before the latest controversy over monitoring the calls of world leaders erupted, a senior White House official defended the gathering of foreign intelligence as a necessary tool to protect the US and its allies as well. “No one disputes the need for careful, thorough intelligence gathering. Nor is it a secret that we collect information about what is happening around the world to protect our citizens, our allies and our homeland. So does every intelligence service in the world,” wrote lisa Monaco, Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, in USA Today.